


You can count on me (I'll be there)

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves Friendship, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Dysfunctional Family, Existential Crisis, Family Dynamics, Gen, Good Brother Diego Hargreeves, Heart-to-Heart, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Talking To Dead People, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 13:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21511501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: “Diego,” Ben said, voice urgent enough to make everyone in the room pause. “Do you have a moment?”Diego looked up. “What’s up, Ben? Everything alright?”Ben looked conflicted. “Uh, you know, I’m actually not too sure.” Now everyone was looking at him. “It’s Klaus, he’s... you know what? I can’t explain it. Just... come with me. Right now. Please.”
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 11
Kudos: 437





	You can count on me (I'll be there)

**Author's Note:**

> I think I've made how I interpret Klaus's powers a little confusing.
> 
> In my head, at least in relation to Ben, it depends on how sober Klaus is. I mostly write him clean, so that's how I'm going to explain. Ben is always there, and he can always interact with small things, like lifting and dropping a book or pushing a napkin off of a table, but Klaus has to be awake for people to see him and for him to be mostly corporeal, but for him to do REAL things, like untie ropes or interact with other people or be SOLID, Klaus has to be actively using his powers (like when his hands went blue in the theatre during the show and Ben used his power to save them), so the reason they could see and hear him here is because Klaus is sober, strong and more powerful than he was before. Ben is stronger in form the closer he is to Klaus, so that's why when he was downstairs he was almost not there, and in Klaus's room he was as solid as if he were alive. You know?? Does that make any sense??
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this! I might write a second chapter, or another fic related to this, but I'm not sure yet. I probably will. But it's late and I'm exhausted so GOOD NIGHT I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS STUPID LITTLE FIC THAT I WROTE IN ONE DAY AND MADE ME VERY HAPPY!!! 😴😴

It was no question that Klaus was getting stronger, hadn’t touched a drug or a bottle or a cigarette for ages now, so it was no surprise when Ben half-floated into the room. Half-floated because though he walked like it was normal, one foot in front of the other, he levitated above the floor just a little bit so it looked slightly unnatural. Klaus wasn’t around, so Ben’s ghost was thin and very transparent, almost no colour or substance to him at all, but by this point in their lives, they had seen stranger things happen than their dead brother floating around the living room with a book in his hand.

“Diego,” Ben said, voice urgent enough to aspire pause. “Do you have a moment?”

Where he was sharpening knives and cleaning gore off of the metal with one of Grace’s old rags, Diego looked up. “W-what’s up, Ben? Everything alright?”

Ben looked conflicted. “Uh, you know, I’m actually not too sure.” Now everyone was looking at him, even Five who stopped scribbling notes in his apocalyptic copy of Vanya’s novel and Luther who marked the page in his book with one of his meaty fingers. “It’s Klaus, he’s... you know what? I can’t explain it. Just... come with me. Right now. Please.”

Diego hardly had time to put his knives away and follow after Ben before his ghostly brother was already gone, floating briskly down the hallway with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie. “What the fuck is going on here? Ben?”

“Alright, listen,” Ben spun around to face Diego but he didn’t stop moving down the hallway, even though now he was moving backwards. “I know it probably looks bad, but he’s not dead or anything, I think he’s just having a nap or something. He’s not dead or hurt or anything, he’s just... you know what, you’ll see. But it looks worse than it is. Just... yeah.”

As he hurried after his ghostly brother, Diego tried not to sigh in exasperation- his siblings were very exhausting, even when they were dead. “I’m getting pretty sick and tired of nobody in this damn family using actual words to form actual sentences to make any actual sense.”

Something unidentifiable crossed Ben’s face. “You’ll see.”

And then they didn’t speak again as Diego followed Ben down the many halls of the old Hargreeves manor to the bedrooms on the top floor until they came to a stop outside Klaus’s closed bedroom door. They stood there in silence for a little bit before Ben gave Diego a very meaningful look and floated through the door, not bothering to open it.

There was something within Diego that didn’t want to enter. Klaus could be excentric at the best of times and sometimes Diego couldn’t stand to be around him. Sometimes, he didn’t want to know about what new problem Klaus was having, because he always seemed to be having some sort of problem. But lately, Diego had been trying to make an effort to be there for Klaus and trying to act more like a brother and less like a self-entitled piece of shit. That was Luther’s thing, anyway.

Besides, if it was important enough for Ben to come and fetch him, then it was at least worth checking out.

Slowly, Diego reached out and took the door handle- the chipped and scratched and busted door handle that had suffered as much as the rest of the house- and turned it tentatively. He took a deep breath before he pushed the door open and winced as the hinges squeaked loudly in the silence.

When he closed the door behind him, the room was plunged once again into darkness. Diego could see Ben’s shimmery form, more solid now that he was in closer to proximity to Klaus, sitting on the bed in the corner, one knee pulled up to his chest and his chin resting on it, eyes bright in the darkness despite being very much dead.

Due to his night-time profession, Diego was very good at seeing in the dark, but he nearly tripped right over Klaus on his entry, who was lying curled up on the bedroom floor with his back to the door, his long gangly limbs crammed between the furniture that Grace had painstakingly picked out for him, his legs jammed under the bed. He looked asleep, or dead just like Ben had said, but thanks to Ben’s warning he knew that wasn’t the case, though it was still disconcerting to see his brother curled up on the floor, uncharacteristically still and silent.

Diego met Ben’s gaze from across the room as he reached a leg out and shook Klaus with his foot. “Klaus? Buddy? You alright?”

“Oh, you know,” Klaus’s voice was airy but strong, alive. “Just having a moment. No big deal. Just another Tuesday.”

“Well, it’s Friday,” Diego said. “So I don’t know where you’ve been, but I need to get you a calendar.” He glanced down. Klaus hadn’t moved a muscle apart from when Diego had roughly shaken him. “Are you alright, man?”

Klaus didn’t answer for a few moments. “Yeah, I’ll survive. I always do.”

At the moment, Diego was wondering why Ben had come to get him- he had absolutely no idea what to do. He was in uncharted territory. “Do you... do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” was Klaus’s reply. “I’ll have to think about it, first.”

Diego looked at Ben again. His dead brother just shrugged hopelessly and gestured vaguely towards Klaus. Licking his lips, Diego stepped over Klaus’s still form and crouched on the opposite side of him. Klaus’s eyes were open and they blinked as Diego came into his view, but otherwise didn’t react. “You look like shit,” Diego said, even though that wasn’t really the case. It was just something he said to get some sort of a reaction out of his siblings. It always worked to some degree.

“So I’ve been told,” Klaus said, and this time, Diego did sigh.

Grunting, Diego shifted so he was lying on the ground beside Klaus and slid his hand under his head as a pillow against the hard ground. He had no idea how long Klaus had been lying there for, but where Diego was all curves and muscle and pudge, Klaus was all skin and bones and angles, so it must have been painful. It was uncomfortable for Diego after just a couple of seconds. “Dude,” Diego said. He was so close that he watched his breath rustle the hair on Klaus’s forehead. “Talk to me. What’s up?”

“What makes you think that anything is up?” Klaus replied cryptically. “This could just be a regular occurrence. I could do this every day.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that you do, in fact, do this every day,” Diego tried to get comfy, but it wasn’t really working. “But this is different. We both know that. It’s m-me- what do you think I’m going to do? Laugh at you or something? Even if I don’t understand, talk _at_ me instead of _to_ me.”

Once again, Klaus was silent, but it was a contemplative silence instead of a closed-off silence. “The ghosts have been talking to me again,” he said, voice devoid of all emotion. “Not the nice ones, either. Scratching at me. Pulling at me. Not nice at all.”

“Isn’t that normal?” Diego asked. It was probably insensitive, but in all honesty, Ben and Klaus’s powers were the most perplexing to him, and it didn’t help that he never took the time to learn about them. “I thought they always do that?”

“I’d like to think that I’m getting better at it, but that could just be my wishful thinking. I do that a lot,” Klaus said absently. Diego frowned. “Normally they only grab at me if I want them to, at least lately. When I was younger, I used to wake up or leave dark rooms covered in scratches and my own blood- I can’t believe you never noticed. Anyway, I’ve gotten good at ignoring them and not letting me touch me and all that stuff, but lately, they haven’t left me alone.”

Diego didn’t like that blank look on Klaus’s face. It reminded him too much of the time when Klaus was on the street every night off his face with drugs and alcohol and sex and every toxic and deadly thing he could find. “What do they say?”

“Is that really important?”

“It is to me,” Even Diego was surprised by the strength of his words, but he wasn’t surprised to realize that he meant them.

Klaus looked at him for a few long, painful moments before his eyes drifted away again and something else caught his attention. “That I should be better. That people expect more from me. That I should stop being a leach and find something worthwhile to do. That Dave is lost forever, which is one of the things I don’t believe, considering I’ve seen him lately. You know. Normal people have voices in their head telling them to do dark things, but I’ve got literal voices from literal dead people whispering in my ear. It’s a little weirder.”

Frowning, Diego reached his free hand up to run his fingers through Klaus’s hair, and Klaus almost purred at the gentle contact. Diego may not have always been the best brother, but he wasn’t the worst either. He knew things. “That s-sucks.”

“You don’t know the half of it, big man,” Klaus’s eyes finally closed as if without his permission as Diego carefully and deftly tangled his fingers in Klaus’s hair and brushed his knuckles down his cheeks. It was nice. Klaus hadn’t touched so gently since 1968.

Diego didn’t even know what to say to that, so he just focused on his finger’s in Klaus’s hair and trying to make it as pleasant an experience as he could muster. Diego wasn’t gentle or soft or tactile in any case, but for Klaus, he could try. “You uh... you don’t listen to them, do you?” He asked eventually.

“Only on bad days,” Klaus replied, eyes still closed; face looking almost peaceful, or the closest to peaceful that Diego had ever seen it. “Believe it or not, this is actually a good day. It might not look like it, but it is. I’m feeling great.”

Ben made a sound from behind them, and Diego couldn’t tell if it was because Klaus was lying, or if he was telling the truth. He wasn’t sure which one was worse. “So how often do you... do this?”

Yawning, Klaus shrugged, which was a slightly aborted movement while he was lying on his side on the floor of his bedroom that he’d probably never cleaned. “Who knows? Ben probably does. Whenever I feel like it, whenever I’m bored, whenever I’m craving, whenever I have to listen to people yelling at me- ghosts and bad guys and siblings and all that. I lived on the streets for like, ten years, you remember. Sometimes a bed is too soft. I’m not really used to it. Sometimes I like sleeping on the floor. I fall asleep easier, anyway. Some people have a comfort blanket or a favourite teddy bear, I have... whatever you’d call this.”

Against his better judgement, Diego couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m no doctor, but I’d call this an existential crisis.”

“Oh yeah,” Klaus said pleasantly as if he were discussing the weather and not a serious mental issue. “I used to know a guy who had those all the time. Nice fella, sometimes he had a bright idea when he was off his meds- keep in mind that he took about hundred at a time so they didn't really do much in the way of helping him but damn were they expensive, but he got them for free- but he never could quite keep his dick in his pants-”

“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Diego interrupted, taking his fingers from Klaus’s hair for just a moment so he could slap it lightly over Klaus’s mouth. “I don’t want to hear about some street rat's sex habits. But I do want to hear about _you_.”

“Hi, my name is Klaus, I’m a Libra. People used to call me the Séance, and I’m the fourth favourite in this family of fuck-ups. I make a damn good re-heated canned soup,” Klaus said, voice muffled under Diego’s hand, and Diego was forced to pull his hand away when Klaus started licking at his palm. He rubbed it on his pants before threading his fingers back in Klaus’s hair, and Klaus pushed his head up, searching for the contact.

“You know what I mean, jack ass,” Diego chuckled.

Klaus paused for a moment, and his eyes fluttered open slightly to meet Diego’s steady gaze, and to Diego’s relief, his eyes were clear. “I’m all good, Diego. I’m fine.”

“Good, that’s good,” Diego tugged at his hair slightly. “You’d tell me if that ever changed though, right?”

“’ Course,” Klaus muttered, voice thick and heavy now, and Diego tried not to smile as Klaus’s eyes closed. He used to be a shit brother, but now he was a little better, and he knew that Klaus was on the verge of passing out. “You know I will, ‘D.”

“ _D_?” Diego snorted. “You haven’t called me D since before Five disappeared and Ben died.”

“Oh well,” Klaus said. “Things change. Maybe I’m feeling sentimental. Can you blame me?”

Diego smiled. “No. No, I can’t.”

They laid there together for a little bit longer until Klaus’s breathing even out and deepened, and then he started to sit up and take his fingers out of Klaus’s curls, but Klaus’s face shifted and he moaned. “No, Diego, don’t go,” he murmured lowly yet strongly. “Stay here with me. Don’t go yet. Please?”

Slowly, Diego lowered himself back down, making soothing noises as he did. “Alright, sure I can stay. No worries.”

More silence, and this time Diego was sure that Klaus was asleep, but he surprised him yet again. “You know,” he said, voice thick with sleep. “I’ve been thinking about Patch a lot recently. There’s a ghost that looks a bit like her, maybe it is her. I wasn’t there when she died- I was busy dodging bullets in the Vietnam War with Dave, so I don’t know what they did to her when she rescued me. But I’m getting better, yeah? You can all interact with Ben now, and I sometimes have talks with Dave at one in the morning. But I’ve been thinking, if I can find her out there in the ether, I can bring her back for you? Not forever, but long enough for you to have a chat with her, or to say goodbye. But, like, only if you want to? As a thank you. For... you know. Not hating me and stuff. And understanding about Dave.”

Honestly, Diego wasn’t sure what to say to that. How Klaus was still awake enough to make such a profound conversation was beyond him, but his fingers stilled in Klaus’s hair as he thought. Klaus made a sound of protest, and Diego started up again. “Y-yeah,” he whispered quietly. “Yeah, Klaus. I’d... I’d like that. Thank you.”

“No sweat,” Klaus muttered again, and Diego smiled. Klaus may have been the worst at times, but he was the best brother Diego ever had.

Ben moved from his spot of the bed then, and just before Klaus fell asleep, he tossed a heavy blanket over the two of them and tucked it around them. The thick fur tickled the exposed skin on Diego’s neck. “Thanks, Benny boy,” Klaus yawned. “I forgot you were even there.”

“That’s my specialty, being a ghost. Now go the fuck to sleep,” Ben laughed, bending down to place a kiss on Klaus’s forehead. Then Klaus was asleep, snoring softly, and Ben was translucent once again. He glanced up at Diego. “Thanks for that. I think he really needed it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Diego replied, feeling a little bit tired himself now. “You better go back downstairs and make sure the other’s haven’t burnt the house down. I’m not there, and I’m 95% of their collective impulse control, so who knows what new disaster they’ve gotten themselves into.”

Knowing full well that Diego was full of bullshit, Ben snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Impulse control. You. _Sure_.” But then he was gone without a glance back, phasing through the door again, and Diego was left in the darkness.

Lying on the floor, one arm falling asleep under his weight, his other in Klaus’s hair and his fingers cramping, a pool of Klaus’s drool between them, a heavy blanket over him, Klaus’s warm breath in his face- normally Diego would think he was in hell. But he was with his brother. So it really wasn’t all that bad.

Actually, there was no place that Diego would rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any more questions about the way Klaus's powers work (at least in my fics) then just let me know and I'll be happy to explain when I've had a long sleep and am, you know, more alive. Thanks for reading xx


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